That union was a last ditch effort to try and keep France in the war. If they had implemented it, it would have been undone once the nazis were beaten you can be sure.
That was also a last-ditch effort to maintain pre-WW2 geopolitical structures rather than a bipolar US-sphere vs Soviet-sphere world. Note that this was basically the nail in the coffin that led to their full-fledged decolonization in the following years. At the time the UK still held very significant military and political sway over the middle east, east africa, and asia
From my recollection, the plan was to grant French citizenship to every British citizen and vice versa, in effect "forcing" the governments to defend their citizens to the end. This was very ambitious, hence why it probably did not happen.
But if it had happen, I have a hard time seeing how it could be undone, stripping people of their citizenship, even if they have a second one is no trivial matter.
And all of that reuse was so expensive that it set back reusable rocketry for decades as the common wisdom said it was uneconomical - even after it was demonstrated that you could have reuse without expensive refurbishment.
I'm reminded of Ian over at Forgotten Weapons which has presented several rifles which were converted from the old thing to the new thing, say bolt action to semiautomatic.
Each time the government looked at existing stock, thought "hmm surely we can save money by refurbishing these old firearms".
And just about each time they at best ended up with a subpar weapon that cost as much as a brand new model designed from scratch. And often something which cost way more...
The idea looks better on paper than it usually is.
You guys are arguing on the reality of a subscription, but Anthropic still resides in the coocoo make-up world of growth at all costs backed up by unfathomable investments. They're not acting rationally by trying to present a good product with reasonable backend fundamentals. They're just trying to maintain the money loss to what they have set aside for the quarter. OpenClaw was not planned for, and thus must be fought.
Anthropic isn't "fighting" OpenClaw. They just want OpenClaw users to switch to API pricing so that their service doesn't become a blackhole for investor money. Operating at a loss can be strategic, but they had to carefully consider the ratio of casual users to power users to keep that loss steady and sustainable.
Power users always cost these services more than they pay, and OpenClaw turns every user into a power user. A recalculation was rational.
What about the fan in the Nintendo Switch? Do Nintendo Switch owners hear the fan or consider it a problem that stops them from making a purchase?
I don’t know why people parrot this talking point about a lack of fan being a positive feature. It’s like a shared propaganda talking point that Mac enthusiasts all agree upon universally. If Apple added fans to the Air and Neo you’d all change your tune since Dear Leader changed their mind, just like when Apple enthusiasts stopped blindly hating Intel suddenly during the architecture transition. You’d all say stuff like “Apple gave us boosted performance and you can’t even hear the fans! All those PC laptops that I’ve never cross shopped since 2001 sound like jet engines!”
A simple passive heatsink has been shown to boost performance significantly in the MacBook Neo.
The throttling of the chips in Apple’s lower end systems are an intentional form of price segmentation. The MacBook Pro won’t be any faster than the Air if the Air was just cooled properly.
I would unironically take a fan in my phone if it stopped it from throttling, dimming the screen, and halting charging when it’s a hot day in direct sunlight. It would just have to make sense in the context of a phone design, of course, which is a challenge.
Nice of you to decide we’re just parroting instead of thinking.
If the MacBook Air had a fan, it would be thicker and would need a bigger battery. It would then be the same, aside from the screen, from the base MacBook Pro. You are 100% correct. The fact it has no fan allows Apple to reduce its weight and thickness. Thus reducing its price. You’re absolutely right.
Fans in laptops are more and more a gamer pilled flight of fancy. Phones and iPads have shown they’re not a necessity.
Removing a fan reduces the price? By how much do you think? Is the Nintendo Switch expensive because of the fan?
Is the Nintendo Switch/Switch 2 a thick device? They are thinner than the MacBook Pro, and they have more space constraints than a MacBook Neo.
If fans in laptops are just for “gamer pilled” why does the MacBook Pro have one?
Do you think Apple can continue to grow their marketshare indefinitely if they continually ignore the 900 million PC gamers who currently own Windows PCs? The PC gaming market is the only one that has been growing since 2021.
The iPad doesn’t prove anything, it’s routinely criticized for wasting its performance potential with inflexible and limited software. Its performance limits are never tested because you can’t actually do things on it in comparison to a full desktop OS.
My phone will regularly dim the screen, halt charging, and throttle performance when I’m out in a sunny day during the summer. You ever been to Miami? I would actually be interested in an actively cooled phone if it existed and would accept a device that was thicker.
Computing as gone on one road; less parts. Separate northbridges, daughter boards for everything, floating point coprocessors, spinning media. All those things have been simplified, reducing the parts count of a usable computer.
I don't bet against simplicity. Those who really require complexity pay for it. On the Apple side, that now includes those who need sustained throughput achieved by a fan.
It's fine, but it's a design decision with tradeoffs, and gamers are prepared to make different tradeoffs (bigger and noisier are ok if they deliver a big enough performance jump).
Is that the tradeoff they make with the Nintendo Switch? I’ve never heard the fan in my Nintendo Switch and it’s a very compact device. My Nintendo Switch 2 is also very compact, smaller and lighter than a MacBook Neo, and it can play AAA games at high frame rates (e.g., Resident Evil: Requiem) while the MacBook Neo struggles with 5 year old titles like Cyberpunk.
This is a very comparable device considering it’s also an ARM-based computer essentially.
We need to stop making excuses for Apple’s unwillingness to include a basic form of cooling for their low end devices. It’s just price segmentation. Make the cheap stuff artificially slow, push you up to the MacBook Pro.
If you cannot hear the fan in a Switch, I implore you to get your hearing checked. It’s not a noisy fan, it’s not a problem the fan is there, but it’s not silent!
I listen to the game audio, which is why I don’t hear it.
I still never said it’s silent. I merely implied that it’s quiet enough to satisfy the design parameters, where it is so quiet it’s forgettable. My ears might hear it but my brain doesn’t notice it. Maybe you need to dust out your Switch, it’s not a loud system.
I have no idea why you’re arguing this so hard, but I guess people just go crazy to defend trillion dollar corporation Apple. Enjoy your fanless computer that gives up 15-30% performance just to save a few millimeters and $3 on the BOM.
I bet Mac zealots would be surprised to find out that almost every PC with a fan comes with configurable modes so you can decide how loud or quiet you want your system and trade off performance. Crazy right? The user gets to choose for the situation rather than having to choose at time of purchase.
I would rather own a system that doesn’t slow down after 7 minutes of sustained activity. MacBook reviewers act like this is no big deal since they don’t play any games like the other 900 million PC gamers in the world. “Oh, your video exports will be done by the time throttling starts, so it’s not big deal.” These reviewers also only know about video editing since it’s their job to edit videos. But playing games is by definition dependent on sustained high performance. If I lose performance after 7 minutes I’m losing performance for most of my session.
It's also a con. You get worse sustained performance. You also get a hotter device. There's a reason the base model M series MBPs consistently bench higher than the exact same chip MBAs in things like Cinebench. The fan.
As I’ve pointed out in my other comments, the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 are perfect devices to dispel this whole “no fan is better” narrative.
Clearly it’s not a challenge to make a compact, performant device with a nearly silent fan. Clearly customers don’t mind that devices have fans even for devices meant to be held in hand for hours that weigh less than a pound.
I can buy a handheld from Nintendo for $450 that can play new AAA games with great performance while the Neo struggles with 5 year old titles like Cyberpunk despite likely having better overall hardware. A MacBook Neo with a fan would get 15-30% better overall performance and +50% framerate in games as has been demonstrated by multiple tinkerers on YouTube.
Easier said than done. What you're describing can take years to implement. Can OpenAI et al. keep burning cash at the same rate for two years while they wait for the salvation of custom silicon if the investments dry up?
Users are not perfect agents. How can you expect the average non-technical person to figure out what is happening? For most people, if they don't see visually see something happening on the screen, it doesn't exist. They simply have no frame of reference to figure out that LinkedIN is hijacking their scroll speed.
It's the same in Spain, which makes OPs proposal kind of useless. The big distinction between a civil and a common law system is the fundamentals. A country's civil code is properly defined, while a common law's system is based on previous cases you have to dig through to find the basics.
You're proving the point. The computer you found wins on the specs page for sure. But the proof is in the pudding; Apple makes money hand over fist because they focus on reasonable specs, and quality. The thing that kills a modern laptop is not a slow CPU or RAM on the chip; it's a cheap chassis that breaks. That's what makes people change their computer.
> Apple doesn’t load your computer up with crapware and ads from the five different companies in the supply chain.
No apple prefers to have a monopoly on ads and crapware but they're still there.
The internet is filled with annoyed apple customers who want to debloat their systems:
You didn't read any of those, did you. They're asking about things like, literally: How can I delete the Chess app? How do I disable Spotlight? How do I remove Siri?
Those are not in any way comparable to ads or Candy Crush in the start menu.
I still haven't figured out how to remove Microsoft Store apps from the Start menu in recent non-LTSC versions of Windows 11, even on Enterprise with the Enterprise-only "disable consumer experiences" Group Policy key set.
Suggestion for any Microsofties listening: give me an easy way to override Windows key press-and-release to open the PowerToys Command Palette, and I'll never complain about the Start menu again.
What makes it horrifying? Plastic? Is the only thing that's important the material it's made out of? I think there's many use cases where the Acer would be less horrifying to use than the Neo. Which device would be better for running a Linux VM for CS class homework for example?
Why bother with a VM for Linux on the Acer? Just run it natively. There's almost nothing that actually requires Microsoft anymore, and you'll get better performance.
A vanishingly small number of end users (both PC and Mac) care about how much RAM they have. I'd be willing to bet that at least 75% of PC and Mac laptop owners couldn't even tell you how much RAM they have, or they mistake hard disk storage for RAM or vice versa.
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